Whaleboat regatta concludes with Azorean wins

The Azorean boats proved their supremacy Sunday on the final day of the whaleboat racing regatta with teams from the islands of Pico and Faial winning the rowing and sailing contests.

ARIEL WITTENBERG

NEW BEDFORD — The Azorean boats proved their supremacy Sunday on the final day of the whaleboat racing regatta with teams from the Azorean Islands of Pico and Faial winning the rowing and sailing contests, respectively. Six boats, three Azorean-made and three Yankee-made, competed in the Dabney Cup race with single heats in rowing and sailing.

In rowing, all the Azorean boats finished before their Yankee counterparts. In the sailing competition, a Yankee boat representing the New Bedford Whaling Museum was able to sneak between two Azorean boats to come in second.

The results of the races can partially be attributed to the crucial differences between the two whaleboats, according to their crews. Azorean whaleboats are 39 feet long, and are rowed by six people. Yankee boats are 10 feet shorter, but one less person rows them. So while the boats are a little lighter, they have less power, said Sara da Silva Quintal, who is the skipper of the United States women's rowing team.

That gives the Azorean boats the advantage during a rowing contest, as was apparent Sunday when the Azorean boats triumphed.

In sailing, the advantage flips. The Azorean boats have larger sails, but have no keel or center board, making them less agile.

"In an Azorean boat, you are sailing just with the sails, you have little control with the rudder," da Silva Quintal said.

Perhaps that's why over the course of the three-day competition Azorean whaleboats capsized twice when sailing in Clark's Cove.

Donald Rei, who sails Azorean boats on the New Bedford team, said the Yankee boats are much easier to sail in stronger winds.

In order to gain speed when sailing, boats must turn as close into the wind as possible. That becomes much more difficult without a center board. Rei, who sailed J boats for years before recently switching to whaleboats, said that while many boats can get as close to 10 to 15 degrees off-wind, the Azorean boats are lucky if they can get 35 to 40 degrees off-wind.

"This is a completely different animal," he said. "It's not as forgiving."

As it turns out, this crucial difference is routed in the history of whaling itself, and the differences between the hunt in each culture.

Yankee whalers would launch their whaleboats off great ships in the middle of the ocean, where the centerboard was needed for stability. In the Azores, though, most whaling was done from the shore, da Silva Quintal said.

"If you had a center board, it would complicate dragging the boat onshore," she said. "The Yankees designed the boats for how they whaled and the Azoreans modified it for what they needed."

Chuck Resevick, who was sailing a Yankee boat for the Whaling Museum team, called the Yankee boats' center board "the great equalizer."

"Hopefully, even if the Azorean boats catch more wind, we will be able to go upwind of them and win," he said before the race. Resevick's crew was able to do just that to finish one of the races in second.

But, overall, Resevick said, the ultimate goal was to navigate the course safely because "capsizing is easy to do."